Can Eastern Kentucky football keep its momentum going in 2025 season?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Eastern Kentucky coach Walt Wells is about to begin his sixth season with the Colonels.
- Wells has twice led EKU football to the FCS playoffs.
- EKU begins the 2025 season Saturday at Louisville.
Walt Wells has guided the Eastern Kentucky football program back to national relevance.
In his five seasons at the helm, Wells has twice taken EKU’s historically successful football team to the FCS playoffs; the Colonels took part in the national postseason in both 2022 and 2024.
While EKU has lost both FCS playoff games under Wells, getting the Colonels back into the national conversation at the FCS level has been a significant accomplishment in its own right. Before Wells’ arrival as the EKU coach in December 2019, the Colonels had last reached the national postseason in 2014.
Continuing this positive trajectory in 2025 will involve Wells finding fast success with a talented but inexperienced group. That task starts Saturday afternoon with the season opener at Louisville (3 p.m., ACC Network).
For the second straight season, the Colonels will have a new quarterback under center.
After going 8-5 overall last year under the direction of grad student quarterback Matt Morrissey, EKU’s starting quarterback for the 2025 season will be redshirt junior Myles Burkett, who began his college career at Wisconsin before playing last season at FCS school Albany.
“I think the biggest thing is his experience,” Wells said Tuesday of Burkett, who is one of nine player-voted team captains for EKU. “The way he handled the team, the way he handled the meeting rooms, the way he handled all the things that he was involved in.
A pro-style quarterback, Burkett threw for 1,845 yards and 10 touchdowns last season at Albany.
“We make this game so difficult in terms of the smoke and mirrors. We talk about the size of the crowd, the magnitude of the game. You’re going to have adversity in games like this,” Burkett said Tuesday. “But how do you handle that? And how do you have that infectious energy with your teammates in terms of keeping your teammates together? I think that’s one thing that, as an offense specifically, in this camp and in the offseason and since I’ve been here, we’ve done a really good job of. ... We might struggle a little bit, but guess what, we’re going to stick together and we’re going to figure out a way.”
At running back, junior Brayden Latham is set to be the featured option behind a new-look offensive line that lost four starters from last season.
Latham tallied 662 rushing yards a season ago. He’s got big shoes to fill, though, following the graduation of Joshua Carter, who posted 1,256 rushing yards last year. Carter — who had three consecutive game-winning touchdowns last season as part of a five-game EKU winning streak to close the regular season — was only the 18th player ever to record more than 2,000 rushing yards in a career (2,273) at Eastern.
In total, Eastern averaged more than 180 rushing yards per game last season.
“I’m trying to show consistency in every play and bring more energy,” Latham said during EKU’s team media day.
Receiver should be a spot of depth for the Colonels. EKU returns four of its top five yardage leaders from the 2024 campaign, led by sophomore Marcus Calwise Jr., who posted team-bests last season in catches (42), receiving yards (526) and receiving touchdowns (5).
“I just carry myself the same way I did last year,” Calwise said. “... Just keeping my head down, working towards bigger and better things.”
Cameron Hergott — a redshirt junior who was the 2020 Kentucky Mr. Football winner and a three-time state champion quarterback at Beechwood High School — has moved from quarterback to wide receiver for the Colonels.
The orchestrator of all this for EKU is sixth-year offensive coordinator Andy Richman.
“This year I think he’s doing an amazing job with us,” Latham said of Richman. “Just being patient and letting us figure ourselves out in camp, seeing what works and seeing what’s best for us and what could help the team. ... It’s a hard job, and he’s doing a good job.”
Richman, defensive coordinator Jake Johnson and special teams coordinator Derek Day are all entering their sixth seasons on Wells’ staff in Richmond.
Defensively, two of EKU’s top four tacklers from a season ago are gone, placing emphasis on veterans Braden Sullivan (a junior linebacker with 92 tackles last season) and Jaheim Ward (a redshirt senior defensive back who had 66 stops last season) to perform. Ward projects to be EKU’s top secondary player following the departure of Mike Smith Jr., a defensive back who had four interceptions last season and seven in his EKU career. A former All-American, Smith is currently on a three-year contract with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.
“With Mike leaving, it put me in a big role in the position room. Last year, Mike was the leader of the DB room, and I followed in his footsteps. I learned a lot playing with Mike. Mike taught me a lot,” said Ward, a preseason All-American selection. “... Now I’ve got to show (other defensive players) how Mike and I did it last year, how can we be better than Mike and I were last year.”
Another big change to the Eastern defense is the loss of linebacker Maddox Marcellus, who had a team-high 97 tackles last year before transferring up to Virginia for the 2025 season.
Last season, the Colonels allowed less than 24 points per game for the first time since 2019.
There’s also notable change for EKU in the special teams room. Gone is kicker Patrick Nations, who made 54 field goals over four seasons with the Colonels. Nations — EKU’s record-holder for field goals made and kicking points (309) — will be replaced by redshirt junior Buzz Flabiano, who made 20 field goals over the past two seasons at FBS school Texas-El Paso. Flabiano converted a 50-yard field goal during EKU’s first team scrimmage earlier this month.
The return of punter and Corbin native Jacob Baker — a redshirt sophomore who had 17 punts of 50-plus yards last season — will give Wells’ squad a field position boost. Baker is one of 11 players on the preseason watch list for FCS Punter of the Year.
While new faces will be asked to deliver in major roles for the Colonels this season, there’s also still a bad taste in EKU’s mouth from the way last season ended. The Colonels were on the wrong end of a controversial refereeing decision in a season-ending FCS playoffs loss at Villanova.
“That’s just us keeping a chip on our shoulder,” Calwise said. “We don’t want to dwell on the past, but at the same time... we just feel like we didn’t finish that Villanova game. It shouldn’t have even been a close game for the refs to call it like that.”
Despite making the national postseason twice in the past three seasons under Wells, EKU hasn’t won a game in the FCS playoffs since 1994. The Colonels have lost their past nine games in the FCS playoffs.
During his Louisville game week press conference Tuesday, Wells declined to go into specifics on EKU’s injury situation entering the season. Wells said that while Eastern’s overall health appears to be good, one true freshman player is “probably” out for the season and a couple players will be gameday decisions for the Louisville contest.
EKU’s 2025 football schedule includes games at Louisville, Marshall
Eastern’s 2025 schedule features a pair of buy games at FBS schools Louisville and Marshall. The Colonels will open the season Saturday afternoon at Louisville and play at Marshall (10-3 last season) in week three Sept. 13.
Louisville went 9-4 last season under Jeff Brohm and closed the season on a three-game winning streak, which included a decisive Governor’s Cup victory at Kentucky and a win over Washington in the Sun Bowl. U of L is paying EKU $550,000 for the game, according to the game contract obtained by the Herald-Leader via the Kentucky Open Records Act.
EKU will receive 500 free tickets for the game, according to the contract, which was signed in April 2018.
Eastern Kentucky is 8-20-1 all time against Louisville. In the last meeting between the Cards and Colonels, U of L won 30-3 in September 2021.
Marshall won its final seven games last season, including a 28-point win in the Sun Belt Conference title game over Louisiana. Marshall’s head coach last season, Charles Huff, is now the head coach at Southern Miss. Marshall is paying Eastern Kentucky $325,000 for the Sept. 13 game, according to the game contract obtained by the Herald-Leader via the Kentucky Open Records Act.
Eastern will receive 300 free tickets for the game, according to the contract, which was signed last August.
EKU is 8-12-1 all time against Marshall. In the last meeting between the schools, Marshall stomped EKU 59-0 in September 2020, the first game of Wells’ tenure at Eastern.
“The importance of that game, it’s two hours away, our fans that remember that rivalry (from when Marshall was an FCS team) will go,” Wells said. “... It’s still important to play, I think. I think our players will enjoy it, especially our players from the Eastern Kentucky region.”
The last time EKU beat an FBS-level team was in 2022, when it topped Bowling Green in a seven-overtime game.
EKU is hosting nonconference contests against Houston Christian (Sept. 6) and Nicholls State (Sept. 27).
Eastern Kentucky is paying Houston Christian $175,000 to come to Richmond for EKU’s home opener at Roy Kidd Stadium. The Colonels are paying Nicholls State $125,000 for their final nonconference contest of the season.
In addition to these four nonconference games, EKU has eight conference games scheduled against United Athletic Conference opponents. Eastern Kentucky opens UAC play Sept. 20 with a trip to West Georgia, which went 1-7 in conference play last season. EKU will play each of the other UAC schools once, with an even split of four home games and four road games in conference action.
EKU went 6-0 in home games in Richmond last season. The Colonels last lost at Roy Kidd Stadium in November 2023.
Eastern Kentucky had six players — Latham, Calwise, Sullivan, Ward, Baker and redshirt senior Jalen Montgomery (return specialist) — chosen to the preseason all-conference UAC team earlier this summer. The Colonels were picked to finish third in the UAC in the league’s preseason coaches’ poll, behind Tarleton State and Abilene Christian. All three of these schools reached the FCS playoffs last year.
Starting in the 2026-27 year, all of EKU’s sports will be part of the UAC.
